For a second
straight day, demonstrators in this San Diego suburb were demanding answers
about the death of Ugandan refugee Alfred
Olango.

The purported Trump backer, who was wearing a “Make America Great
Again” cap -- the slogan of Trump’s campaign -- later claimed to reporters
that he was “cornered, I was beaten to the ground. When I attempted to run away, I was
chased by the entire mob of people.”

From there, the protesters
-- roughly 200 -- took to the streets of El Cajon, demanding justice for Olango,
who they said was mentally ill. They were chanting “no justice, no peace, no
racist police!”

At times, the
demonstrators blocked traffic. California Highway Patrol officers in riot gear,
some with dogs, blocked freeway entrances. Some officers faced off with protesters
occasionally, but mostly kept their distance.

The protests were peaceful for the most part.

Demonstrators in El Cajon, California on September 28, 2016 demanding answers about the fatal police shooting the day before of a Ugandan refugee
KFMB-TV

But the protesters
insisted they won’t back down.

One told KFMB,
“This isn’t going to go away. We’re going to keep doing this as long as it
takes.”

Olango had a history of run-ins with authorities and was distraught
over the recent death of his best friend.

He was having an emotional breakdown over his friend’s death when
police confronted him, said attorney Dan Gilleon, who says he’s representing Olango’s
family.

Authorities said it took more than an hour for police to arrive at the shopping
center where Olango had been wandering into traffic. It took about a minute for
him to be shot and killed.

The investigation
centered on a video of Tuesday’s shooting taken by a bystander. Police have
produced a single frame from the cellphone
video to support their account, saying it shows Olango in the “shooting
stance.”

The photo shows
Olango’s hands clasped together and pointed directly at an officer who had
assumed a similar posture with his gun a few feet away.

The vaping device
in his hands had two components, a box about the size of a cellphone and a metallic cylinder that
was 3 inches long and 1 inch wide. Police said the cylinder was pointed right
at the officer.

Olango’s relatives demanded the full video be released, according to Gilleon.

“They’re
cherry-picking part of the video,” Gilleon said. “This is exactly
what police have said is unfair -- when
only portions of video are released
against them.”

Mayor Bill Wells said he had seen the video and
that it was not “tremendously complicated to figure out what
happened.”

Wells was asked how he would feel if it was his child that had been
shot.

“I saw a man
who was distraught, and a man acting like he was in great pain,” Wells said. “And I saw him get
gunned down and killed. If he was my son, I would be devastated.”

Olango, 38,
arrived in the U.S. years ago from Uganda. Since then, he ran afoul of the law
several times: selling cocaine,
driving drunk, and illegally possessing a 9mm semi-automatic handgun when he
was arrested in Colorado in 2005 with pot and ecstasy in his car, according to
court records. He pleaded guilty in federal court and was sentenced to nearly
four years for being a felon in
possession of a gun.

Experts said it
was too early to conclude whether the California shooting was justified or
could have been prevented.

Chuck Drago, a
former Florida police chief who consults about police use of force, said that
once Olango struck the shooting pose, officers would have had to react quickly
if he drew an unknown object from his pocket.

“An officer
doesn’t have enough time to wait to determine if that’s a gun in his
hand,” Drago said. “If a person is pointing something at an officer
and he believes it’s a gun and
it is a gun and that officer doesn’t have his gun out, that officer will lose
that gunfight.”

Police haven’t named
the officers involved, though Wells
said both were 21-year veterans and one was Officer Richard Gonsalves.

Gonsalves was
demoted last year after allegations that he sexually harassed a lesbian
colleague. The City Council had to defend the move to angry citizens who had
called for him to be fired.

Christopher
Rice-Wilson, associate director of the civil rights group Alliance San Diego,
questioned why one officer felt
non-lethal force was appropriate while the other did not. Both officers have
been put on administrative leave while the incident is investigated, per
department policy. Officials have not revealed which officer fired the shots.

El Cajon,
a city of 100,000 people about 15 miles northeast of San Diego, has become home
for many refugees fleeing Iraq and, more recently, Syria.